8mm

Ever wondered what the world would look like through the eyes of a fish? If you have, and even if you haven’t, the Rokinon 8mm f/2.8 II fisheye lens is here to satisfy that curiosity. With 180-degree field of view and a 35mm-equivalent focal length of 12mm, Rokinon’s lens is here to satisfy special purposes and give Go-Pro users an alternative. Like all of Rokinon’s offerings, it has an aperture ring and large focusing ring, giving you considerable control of the glass. And like all of the company’s offerings, the lens is a fully manual focus offering. [click to continue…]

Very recently, Rokinon announced a couple of updates to their lens lineup. Their very good 8mm f2.8 fisheye was updated to version two, and the company also introduced their new 10mm f2.8 for APS-C DSLRs and 12mm f2 for mirrorless cameras. As with all things Rokinon, the lenses are manual focusing and also have full manual apertures. Many of the company’s lenses do not have coupling, so there will be no communication between the camera and the lens (with the exception of their offerings for Nikon DSLRs.) This also means that you’ll need to turn your cameras off of the automatic modes.

We’ve used lots of Rokinon’s lenses and often find lots of them to be super sharp–though problems do occur with quality control specifically with the focusing scale. But to fair, that’s only happened to us once.

We’re going to be calling in review units soon, but in the meantime you can check out the tech specs after the jump.

Over a very long period of time, the staff of The Phoblographer have reviewed countless lenses. Most notably though, we’ve reviewed a version of nearly ever Rokinon lens produced to date. Because we’ve been generally very happy with the production quality, we’ve compiled a guide to their lenses consisting of the reviews we’ve done.

Looking for some affordable prime lenses with some very good image quality? This guide has you covered whether you’re looking for a Rokinon Lens or Samyang lens.

A couple months ago we reviewed the Rokinon 8mm f2.8 fisheye lens for Sony NEX here on The Phoblographer. We were pretty smitten with its compactness, ergonomics and overall quality (build and image wise), and are all the more happy to be able to announce that the lens will soon be available for general purchase. (It should have been available months ago, but apparently Samyang had some delay in its production.) Since the lens is designed for APS-C mirrorless formats, it is only logical that Samyang will ship it in both Sony NEX and Samsung NX mount. The lens will be available from July, and retails under the Rokinon brand name for GBP 279.99 / EUR 349.99 (~ USD 430).

Rokinon lenses can be purchased from B&H, who should have the new lens in stock as soon as it becomes available.

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I was extremely pleased with the Rokinon 85mm f1.4 and to this day still believe that it is one of the best lenses I’ve tested. So when the new 8mm f3.5 fisheye was announced, I was pleasantly surprised to test it out. Being an all manual lens and coupled with the Nikon D5100’s electronic rangefinder abilities, I thought to myself that this lens has to perform exceptionally well.